Bleach dye restores to its original color which is true black.

No, it is not gray. I cannot see it.

Something might be wrong with your monitor then...they aren't true black, as can be seen in the screenshot above. Kind of easy to see them...check to see if maybe the contrast on your monitor is set bad or maybe just too dark or something.

Their monitor may just be fine. Have you ever considered the other poster might be colorblind? The only way I knew there were earrings in your pictures is because I figured they were in the post somewhere. It took me a few minutes to find them, thay do blend into the background for me. Some color combinations in UO are very difficult for colorblind people to see, couple this with the smallness of the item, it is a problem.

Best advice I can give? They can be insured, do so. When you die, you will have to hunt for them in your backpack. But if you really need to get back to your body, I guess keep a gorget or another armor piece in your bank, that you can slap on to recover your body then hunt for the earrings after recovery.

Thanks Pickaxe Pete.

I kinda figured it wouldn't work, because I never remembered seeing everything come up in my pack when I use Ctrl-Shift for other things. Ah well, it was worth a shot!

I agree that there are many things in UO that are hard to distinguish for some players. I've seen quite a few posts concerning certain hues and discerning or even finding items of that color.

It may have been a good idea to add a bit of sparkle, or lighter color to the dark grey as a highlight. Might have helped make them stand out a bit more in the backpack.

I have the luxury of choosing between several computer monitors, and UO looks MUCH different color-wise depending on which one I am using. This is because monitors are set by default to be as bright as possible, sacrificing all real dark-tone variation and true white, thus to look good in poor retail chain-store lighting. The way to fix this is to run a calibration utility, such as the one included with the newer Nvidia Forceware video card drivers. But anyway, start by just playing with the contrast and brightness controls on your monitor, sometimes just a small adjustment there will make a big difference.

The best monitor I have seen for showing the earrings really clearly is the SGI SW1600 as it is a professional screen meant for medical or graphics use, so it really shows things accurately.

Hmm, interesting indeed.

I'm assuming that the artists and devs have professional-grade monitors of that caliber, too. So there could be quite a variance between what they see and what we see, even amongst ourselves. Good tips on adjusting settings too!

I have a habit of resetting monitors to defaults now and then, and readjusting them. Just depends on if my lighting or environment has changed some. Even shadows and such can change how clearly you see your screen, so I try to account for that after re-arranging or something, hehe.

Yes, that would be the case.

If it were me, I would design things to be a little bit easier though, using larger inventory graphics for some of the small jewelry, and maybe a brighter color!

To make it just a bit clearer how to find the Nvidia display optimization wizard, for those who use Nvidia products, that is, just right-click the Nvidia logo on your taskbar (near the clock) and then left-click 'Nvidia Control Panel.' When the new screen appears, left-click 'run display optimization wizard' under the 'display' category!

This will help to tweak one's monitor settings. Consult the manual for your monitor to see what buttons to press to bring up the onscreen adjustment menu, and use the controls to tweak things while running the wizard.

Good luck!

Another option, as recommended by PCWorld in their article entitled Get More Out of Your PC (under 'Calibrate Your Colors') would be to try Hex2Bit's free Monitor Calibration Wizard, here: http://hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp

That looks useful to me. Enjoy.

I know I can see them if I turn up the black level. But I also play video (like Battlestar Glactica) on my computer monitor, too. So I like to set black as true black, not grayish black.

When a monitor is properly adjusted, everything should look good on it, plus you should be able to see all of the slight tone variations on the darks and lights.